Because I was unable to coax myself to sleep (you people know why - I practically slept the whole day) I went Youtube surfing. The first thing that came into my mind was the Virginia Tech massacre, so I typed it into the Search box, and waited for the results to load.
Seconds ticked past. A whole list of videos appeared. Amongst them were videos made as tribute to those killed and their families. All looked about the same, until one which stood out from the crowd. "Virginia Tech Shooting and Original Song by Tom Cellie" it said(the video is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyFXvSArOuw&mode=related&search=). So I clicked.
The lyrics were moving enough, if not the music. It started with "You had so much hope, you had so much life, and my heart grows cold, when I think of how you died".
Indeed. Cold was my heart when I first saw the news report. As we venture deeper into the cause, we were told of a boy who grew up under close scrutiny and bully, by others not sharing the same skin colour as him. Anger manifested, he had to suppress. Hatred grew, he let it blossom. And in the end, as an animal forced so its end, he raged and retalliated. And there started the biggest scar on the history of mankind to-date.
What has become of our world today, I wonder. Do we do justice to the high level of education we receive? When have books told us we can pick on those who are weaker? When have religions told us to add salt to others' wounds? NO. And yet these are happening, everyday, everywhere.
I was even more appalled at one of the comments left at one of the videos. Indeed, that comment sparked off series of retalliation by others in the youtube community. He likened Asians to nut-cases who go around shooting indiscriminately. My first reaction - Walao you son of a butch (I assumed it's a HE)! Then, I realized why he said that. The nutcase who gunned people down was a Korean. And Korea is in Asia. Secondary school Geog will tell you that. Which brought me to another issue.
Generalization. And discrimination. One Korean committing crime equates to all Asians are nutcases. Angry? Outraged? But sit down and think. Are we not, at any point of time in the past, one of them, just that we did not realize? If we see some ah bengs on a bus, and so happen those ah bengs were wearing a certain school's uniform, we make the remark "Eee, so and so school is ah beng school." How true is that, I wonder. Are all students from that school ah bengs and ah lians?
And then most unfortunately I made the decision to watch the video Cho sent to NBC just before his second round of shooting. I saw before my eyes, THE person who single handedly shot 32 people, all with hand pistol. He was talking, venting out all his angst. Ironically he looked calm. His words sent chill down my spine (ok this phrase sounds so cliche but it happens to best describe exactly how I felt). How could one of us end up being a monster the entire world is talking about!
But after everything, I learnt something I never knew from the reports. How devastated the families were, when they learnt about the sudden deaths of one of their family members. I almost teared when the pictures of the deceased were shown. The song was right, they had so much life in their eyes. Every picture told a different story of a different individual with different hopes and dreams. Never had they known April 16 was their last moment on earth. Never had they known they were are the wrong place at the wrong time, until the bullets landed on them and robbed them of their lives. It's quite ironical that Prof Liviu Librescu, who survived the deadly Holocaust, did not survive this campus killing.
What does life mean? All I can think of is the cliche saying "live life to the fullest". But the question is this - how to when there are so may uncertainties around?
